Episode 15: Mistakes Beginning Digital Marketers Always Make

I’ve been in the business of marketing for a couple of decades. I’ve observed and trained a lot of young marketers. Of course, I was also a beginner. We all make mistakes, but here are a few pointers that can help you dodge a few. That’s what we’re going to talk about this week.

I’ve been in the business of marketing for a couple of decades. I’ve observed and trained a lot of young marketers. Of course, I was also a beginner. We all make mistakes, but here are a few pointers that can help you dodge a few. That’s what we’re going to talk about this week.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1:0:00Make the logo bigger, believe it or not, this day and age haven't really been doing a lot of online or digital marketing and so they really don't know where to start. Welcome to make the logo bigger. Don't let your marketing getting caught are poor by the way, your marketing knowledge economy, the agency that's running around telling you that you need to do all these new fancy programmatic things. You don't need to think about anything else until the basics are taken care of. The podcast that takes you behind the scenes of a marketing agency grant and outline. That's what your page should be structured like. Let's just say you've got three topics that you're going to talk about are three bullet points in there. Those three bullet points. Those three subheadings should have some relationship to the actual title of the article. Two guys that get paid to do this stuff on a daily basis.

Speaker 1:0:42Walk. People cheat their website like a depreciating asset. You build it once and that's supposed to give you value and that value and appreciates our time. Now it's a. it's an employee that needs to learn, is to be trained at needs to change, needs to be loved. It needs to evolve. Here's your host, Bill Z. end of the day. It's all linked to content. At some point you got to get somebody's attention, so creating and interesting content has got to be the first step and Mike Carol, if you don't keep your website relevant, it doesn't even matter what you did in the past anymore like, cool. We'll just simply see you as a nonactive non publishing of non changing z on the web and they want things to be current. And now the obligatory legal disclosure though rice is the founder and CEO of Colorado, a marketing and design agency. Mike Carroll is the head of growth at nutshell, a crm software provider. All opinions expressed by bill are definitely the opinions of Quantico. All opinions expressed by Mike are his own opinions expressed by guests of this podcast could be right or wrong. Who knows? This podcast is for informational purposes and has a reasonable probability of making your marketing better. And now this week's episode,

Speaker 2:1:48Hey, welcome to episode 15 of make the logo bigger, or my name's bill rice and I'm the founder and CEO of Kalydeco and I'm super excited.

Speaker 3:2:00Sweet. Well, actually by the time you hear this, I'll probably be somewhere in, in Greece, but this week I've been preparing to go on a two week vacation, something that we've anticipated for a really long time, um, our sell our family and, and some other families that we've traveled with. I'm super excited. It's kind of a sabbatical, a sorta two weeks to, to really kind of shut down and shut off and enjoy the family. A CCM, incredible, uh, things throughout Italy and um, and, and really just these kinds of vacations always kind of reinvigorate me and give me some time to think deeply. And really I always come back with new energy, which I think goes forward into the team. Um, and we encourage our teammates to do this. In fact, this is something that I did specifically this year where I require that every single team member takes two weeks of vacation, a, at a minimum.

Speaker 3:2:56We obviously give some more opportunities, take some time off, but are required to take to continual weeks of vacation and do something fun and exciting to allow them to just really shut down a reengage and reinvigorate their passion for what they do. And so I'm getting ready to do that. Um, and so that's created a kind of a, an interesting and, and, uh, um, uh, exciting couple of weeks leading up to that. Um, both in good and bad ways. Uh, it's always a little nerve wracking when, um, when team members go off for an extended period of time. But, um, I wanted to definitely show as an example to the team, uh, that this is something that's important to do is something that's okay to do. Um, and um, so anyway, we're going to talk about that a little bit, but, um, but that's kind of what's been going on here in my mind and as a result of that, um, it's really kind of highlighted this article that I wrote, um, that you guys will be able to take a look at it.

Speaker 3:3:52And then we're going to talk about is the theme for this podcast, and that is mistakes that beginning digital marketers make. So I personally have been in the business of online marketing in particular for, uh, for decades, uh, which is kind of amazing because digital marketing, online marketing and the Internet has only been around for a few decades, believe it or not. Um, and so, um, back in, in early 2000, I'm sometimes a little bit in the late nineties as well. I was doing some different stuff in the late nineties, uh, that involve the Internet, but since about 2000 have been deeply involved with figuring out how to, um, to generate consumer interest and demand from the Internet. And so through that process myself, even being a young person and in a whole different marketing channel, um, you know, I was young and trying to figure it out at one point.

Speaker 3:4:45And then, um, as I've got a grown up through that time, I've trained a lot of young marketers and, and as a result, um, one, uh, have strong empathy for where the beginners starts. Um, and also have seen that process and watched people mature, um, through, uh, the, the process of kind of making those mistakes and learning from them. Uh, and then hopefully over time I've started to perfect some techniques that allow, um, the, the people at least that I'm involved with to make fewer of those mistakes and kind of accelerate their knowledge and their performance faster. And that's Kinda what we're going to talk about today. One, what are those, just a traditional mistakes that are made and how can we potentially avoid some of them. So, um, like I said in the last several weeks, I'm actually Kinda over the last couple months we've been training a lot of new folks.

Speaker 3:5:40We've, we've made quite a bit of new hiring here. And as a result, we've got a two types of newness in our organization. Um, we have experienced people that we've hired in that are new to our organization, new to our workflow, new to our, our philosophies, our culture, our processes. So that's one element of sort of a new nurse and training. And then we've got another batch of folks that are more junior, um, and a handful, we've got four interns as well. Um, and so we've got some, um, some, some totally new people who are just learning the craft of digital marketing and, and, and a lot of cases a development on top of that, um, which is kind of an interesting dynamic that will tell us. So we're, we're heavily focused on, I'm doing marketing with technology or software enablement and um, so we've got those types of folks as well.

Speaker 3:6:34So all that's to say that over the last month or so I've been heavily, uh, consumed with and thinking about how do we take this for us as a small organization, a large number of individuals. So we're talking about eight different individuals, um, that we're trying to kind of bring up as quickly as he can with little to no, a sort of training overhead in the organization. Right? So the people that are doing the work, I'm also have to kind of split the time to train and get these up to speed. And it's, it's a, it's a tricky balance, particularly in an agency like ours, uh, when we're, you know, less than a dozen, um, when all of a sudden in this happens in cycles, all of a sudden a, your organization tends towards the young end. Um, and so your experience, people are carrying the weight of a lot of the execution, but also, um, have to figure out how to get these people up to speed so that they can be a effective.

Speaker 3:7:29And again, that's including experienced people at some times. We often discount that where we're hiring experienced person. Um, we hired somebody just recently who was, uh, you know, has been a marketing director in a large organization, um, and has a ton of experience at both age and, and actual skillsets. And, uh, it still takes some time, right? Because they don't know our culture, they don't know our workflow, they don't know the way that we look at things. And so often we discount, hey, if I just bring in an experienced person, we don't need to do any training, we don't need to do any sort of onboarding process. And they'll just all of a sudden be 100 percent effective and that's just not true. So whenever we get overweighted it becomes a tricky balance of how to, how to do both. And so we're kind of trying to think about that and maybe we'll talk specifically about that on, on some future podcasts, but, um, but that's another tricky element to it.

Speaker 3:8:23But what we're going to focus on today, um, is, is literally, I'm kind of just understanding and level setting the mistakes that beginning digital marketers or new people to your organization will just inherently make, um, and trying to think through how to minimize, um, the, the amount of those mistakes and uh, the impact of potentially those mistakes or just side step them altogether. So, um, so let's talk about that, um, in particular. So one of the biggest mistakes that I see with new marketers or even people trying to get into the organization with experience, um, and want to make a quick impact. And this applies to people in companies and organizations who are in marketing departments as well. You get a new person in and they're trying to make an immediate impact and so often they'll kind of just crash through walls, uh, without taking this first step and that first step is um, or the first kind of big mistake is starting a any sort of marketing initiative without planning.

Speaker 3:9:22So not really taking the time to slow down and think through the plan and instead we just throw out and execute tactics, um, or we just do something or maybe we pull something out of our tool bag from a, from a past organization or from a past agency. Uh, and we just kinda do this without actually thinking through the whole process of who we're targeting and what the objective is, what success looks like. A lot of the things we talked about last week. I'm on the art of the creative brief, right? And so we just come in here and we crashed through and it's super important, um, to, to think through that planning process first so that whatever that you bring forward, even if it is a, an old tried and true tactic now that you're experienced with, you'll have a higher level of success if you go through the process of, of, of thinking about whose attention, what audience are you trying to gain attention from, um, how are you going to build influence with that audience?

Speaker 3:10:18Um, what are some of the proven marketing principles, um, that you know, are going to work, are well documented. I'm just really thinking through that process and creating a good plan, um, that will allow you to, to one, just execute without flaw a because a lot of times we forget about all the little pieces that have to be in place or have to be done in order for you to, to execute any sort of online tactic. I'm just inherently, there tends to be more moving pieces than, than slapping up a creative on a billboard. Um, so that's super important. So sitting down a critically thinking about the problem you're trying to solve, uh, doing some research, I can't overemphasize this enough. Um, I get frustrated a lot of times with new people or with people that are trying to kind of move too fast is they'll come through with an initiative, um, and they've not done any research.

Speaker 3:11:06I mean the Internet when I started this business, the Internet was not as robust as it was, so it was difficult to kind of see what other people were doing and draw inspiration, um, and experience from a, both the things that were being done well and the things that were being done poorly out on the internet. But now you can do that surfer around your competitors, see what they're doing, a surfer around on the marketing leader literature. Um, there's all kinds of research and statistics and, and really get a form from foundation and background and support for what you're actually getting ready to do or what you would like to do. Um, so that you're just on more solid ground and footing as you go forward. So I'm so super critical if you're new to an organization, and again, keep in mind throughout this whole list that I'm going to talk about here and all these insights, I'm talking about a not only a brand new digital marketer who's never really done this, um, you know, as there hasn't been their work yet, or they're just learning the business as well as a seasoned, experienced digital marketers coming into a new organization.

Speaker 3:12:10They both fit. You're both new, um, and you're both trying to, to kind of execute, um, with, with one hand tied behind your back. Quite honestly in the case of a brand new digital marketer, you just don't have all the skills and experience to, to be able to quickly bring to bear, um, when you're, when you're building stuff or planning stuff or, or even, um, w we kind of had this situation with one of our young people just don't feel confident in the room debating, um, you know, your particular or advocating your particular marketing initiative. So you just, you feel disadvantaged because you know that, that people have more experience and maybe lack some confidence. But if you're a new person, same sort of thing applies. You got one hand strap behind your back because you don't know who, who you have around you. Um, and again, this isn't an example that we've had.

Speaker 3:12:57You don't know who the supporting cast is in your agency. You don't know what your strengths, your weaknesses are. You don't know who can do what you don't know whether, uh, do I have a developer who can build this thing that I'm thinking of? Do I have a designer that's capable of creating a, this particular user experience and interface from a design perspective? Um, and so all of those are kind of the same problem, right? You've got a knowledge deficit, you've got an experience deficit. Um, sometimes it's around marketing. Um, sometimes it's just around your organization and both kind of create the same effect as you're trying to build a successful marketing campaign or program. Um, so the other kind of, um, thing that often happens is I'm in a planning, uh, so you get so consumed. The planning's important as I just outlined there, but they get so consumed and comfortable in the planning.

Speaker 3:13:52And research process that they never get started marketing, right? I see this a lot. Um, and, and this is a very comfortable place to be because there is so much information. It's kind of the flip side of, of my previous argument is there is so much on the Internet you can consume and consume and consume and a lot of people are talking about a lot of things that maybe you're going to try to do a, you're going to get conflicting ideas and advice. Um, and so over time you're just, you know, you can, you can kind of go down this rabbit hole and never come to a conclusion as to what your going to do. So, so do that research and try to find some, some from trends. Um, and anything that you're looking at, um, try to find some patterns that you see over and over again.

Speaker 3:14:38Uh, because one disadvantage of the Internet is there's a lot of people just chunking out a bunch of stuff for, for Seo and so you just get a lot of repeat. So, um, so really the, even those volumes of research that can be done, there's, there's probably just a small subset of what's useful. So trying to get to that as quickly as you can, um, and come to a conclusion as to what that first test is going to be, what that small, I'm starting point for your marketing and industry. There's going to be and just get started, right? So, uh, so do the planning, but don't get stuck there. Go ahead and figure out, even if it's on a small scale, what you can start with and start marketing. The other thing is, and I actually see kind of both sides of this, so I'm going to actually put both of these weaknesses.

Speaker 3:15:22Um, one kind of like we talked about before, um, you get the folks that are kind of studious, um, and they spend all their time reading about marketing but none other time experience that are actually doing anything. And then you get some people that don't like to read, um, and they don't spend any time reading about marketing. And so therefore they know one or two things that somebody may be physically showed them and they know it never go any deeper than that and their curiosity never takes them into some of those uncharted waters that are important. And if you wanna, if you wanna grow, if you want to disadvantage your competitors and kind of stomp on them and move past them, you're going to have to move into those edge cases and experienced some of it on your own so you can't spend all your time reading about marketing and not doing it.

Speaker 3:16:10Um, and then again, the flip side is you can't spend all your time doing your one trick and never read on how to expand that. So, um, so anyway, um, two sides of the same coin, but it can really disadvantage if you don't kind of move beyond that. Um, another one, uh, another big one that I see often and it's getting more and more prevalent because tools are just so available and so interesting and so robust and so cool. And you'll get people that just get enamored and spend all their time playing with the tools. Um, or trying to use tools before they've actually tested, um, anything manually, so I'm a big advocate of when you're trying to do any sort of marketing campaign, um, to incrementally do things manually on a small scale and see if you get the least bit of traction and engagement.

Speaker 3:17:03And if you do, then try to scale it and expand it, uh, in a manual way so that you truly understand the individual steps that you're taking and the user experience that you're delivering and taking a customer through. And then from there, go and find and test the right tool to give you additional scale. You gotta be really careful. Uh, like I said, these tools are super cool. They're super interesting. The people who build them are very clever at how they market them. And so they feel like I'm in. These guys and gals have done a great job. They feel like you can't live without them, but I'm encouraging you to sort of avoid that first and um, and try to do it manually and try to walk through the process and then back into the tools that you need. Um, and figure out which, which of those and test which of those is actually going to give you the results that allow you to do something that you already know is working.

Speaker 3:18:05Um, because the problem with these tools is one, you could spend a lot of money, uh, trying some things. I'm often, there's a significant cost and investment that needs to be made, not just in money but, but most especially in time, uh, and kind of getting everything in there so that it works everything from data to workflow setup and that sort of thing. Um, and then at that point then you get to run your tests and then heaven help you if it, if it doesn't work or falls flat, um, because then you've got a couple problems there. One, you often can't tell exactly why because the tool is so complex or the workflows become so complex so quickly, it's hard to sort of troubleshoot, um, where in the process it went wrong. Um, and then again, um, you've invested a lot of time just to create that, that first test and then to find out that your theory or your idea or your concept is just falling flat.

Speaker 3:18:58So I'm really, really encourage you to avoid the tools at all costs until you've kind of played through it manually and, and felt like you get just the tiniest bit of traction and results. I'm kind of in the same vein with that is my next one. And that's never a learning to work small. So a lot of times, especially if you go into a big organization first, you will always work on these kinds of huge campaigns, these branding campaigns and they're super sexy and interesting and beautiful to kind of work through. Or you're just used to spending a ton of money. And of course you can get reaction. Um, if you go into the marketplace and just dump tons of money into ad words, you, you will get clicks, you will get responses. Uh, and if you get, if you create enough scale in anything, um, you will get something that feels like success, but you'll never get a clear understanding of incrementally what is a strong performance.

Speaker 3:19:58Um, so I'm, I'm a big advocate of working small first. I'm trying to, to maximize the amount of impact, the amount of, of reaction, the amount of, of success that you can have with a very, very small investment. And that could be money that could be time. Um, and, and for the least amount of investment, what is the maximum unit I'm a success or effect can I have? And once I get to understanding that ratio, uh, it really helps me when I go to scale, right? So if I can figure out with a small amount of investment of time and money, what is the maximum amount of, of engagement reaction conversion, um, response can I get for that small unit? And then once I know what that unit is and I say, Hey, if I put this amount of time or I put this amount of money in here, I will get x number of conversions, I'll get x number of traffic.

Speaker 3:20:55Um, and then from there I know what that ratio is and then I see, okay, if I double my spend or, you know, add some incremental amount of spend to it or add some incremental amount of time, do I get the same ratio of, of impact, do I get the same ratio of outcome from that? And then that tells me that that second test tells me, okay, do I have something here that will scale or does it just mean that hey, if I give it this much personal attention and people are just, they feel like it's a personal connection and they feel some sort of reciprocity to me, but I can't scale it, right? Because I can't give that level of personalization maybe at scale. Um, but so that's really important kind of second step to figure out there by, by working small you can do that.

Speaker 3:21:41And then this is also conveys into the tool, um, once I get that incremental level of success, can I apply a tool that allows me to scale and do I get the same ratio of impact from that? So it's a really, if you start by working small, uh, you'll create a baseline and a metric that you can really determine whether or not you're scaling efforts, uh, or viable because not everything that you could do small can you scale. And so that's a really important kind of second step to get right because again, if you, if you test something small, which, which you should, um, and then you just, then you know, 10 x your spend a lot of times, you know, you'll, you'll create a lot of damage in that case. So you need to Kinda walk those steps up so you can see if the scale is viable.

Speaker 3:22:27Um, another one, and this is growing more and more important, uh, as far as a mistake to avoid. Um, and that is people marketing folks who avoid, um, understanding or being involved with the technical stuff. Um, this is a real sad comment when, when I hear a client's or, or, uh, even people that are in the marketing professionals say, well, I don't understand the technical stuff, so that's not, I just do the creative, right? I just do the creative stuff. Um, I just, I just think about like, you know, great marketing, uh, taglines and, and, and beautiful brand aesthetics and that sort of thing. And I don't, I don't mess with the technical stuff, especially in digital marketing. The technical stuff is a huge point of leverage, right? And so you gotTa, you gotTa dig in there, you've got to, you've got to make sure that you understand, I'm technically a lot of the aspects of how this stuff works.

Speaker 3:23:27You gotTa, you gotta dig into understanding how the Internet works. You got to dig in and you gotta understand how analytics and tracking and goal tracking work so that you can actually see the behavior and you could test the behavior that's happening. You've got to understand the technical stuff so you can understand what's viable, um, when you're developing some sort of engaging mechanism, um, or how you can, I mean, group growth hacking as a concept is really kind of brought this to the forefront is if you've, if you marry a, a marketer, a and a software engineer together, um, that, that, uh, two person duo could outperform any marketer, right? Because you can constantly iterate, test and those sorts of things. And you can build stuff that enhances, uh, the behavioral characteristics, um, and the behavioral responses that are most important and powerful to you.

Speaker 3:24:17So I can't tell you how critical that is, especially a, as the internet gets more dynamic, more fractured. Uh, now we're talking about websites and mobile, um, and the characteristics, behaviors, the technical aspects of those or a wholly different. If you don't understand the technical stuff, it's gonna be really difficult for you to understand what is possible, um, and how, um, how things will work better. Um, and when you experience things, um, and you try to translate those into things that you do, it's really important for you to understand like how do these things work? Um, if you see something in the wild that you think is super interesting, um, and you want to bring to a client, it's really important for you to figure out like, how did they do that? How did they achieve that? How does that work? How did they get me to do what they got me to do?

Speaker 3:25:09Um, and so the technical stuff, you've definitely got to spend some time really understanding the technical nature. And then there's just some simple things. Um, and we run into this all the time. If you don't understand the technical nature of your website and how, how kind of the dns and the domain works. Um, I can't tell you how many little clients have come to it, even big clients and they're like, well, my website doesn't work. And, and then we just had this actually last week will come to find out your domain expired. You didn't renew it. I mean, something simple but, but at the core of your brand, you literally just didn't pay for it and it expired, right? Um, and so you got to be careful about that stuff. You got to understand how these things are wired together. And then my last one, um, and I think this is increasingly important for marketers and this is not necessarily who was who and where we normally come from.

Speaker 3:25:58Um, but I think it's critically important that you learn to code. You don't have to be a know frontline software engineer here, but you should understand and, and pick a language, um, and, and learn to be able to code, um, at at least an introductory level so that you understand, um, how, uh, how the software process works, especially if you want to leverage some of these powerful tools and functionality and features that are now becoming predominant on the web. I mean, you look at something like Google apps and your google drive, Google drive, which is always amazing to me in your google docs and Google spreadsheets and your, and your Google, um, what do they call it? A slides work in the browser, like you're working on the desktop. I mean, you're dragging and dropping files and dumping them into folders and you're dragging and dropping images from your desktop into your, your slide presentation.

Speaker 3:26:58Um, it, it, they've, they've taken away that barrier, that browser and it can act just like a desktop environment. If you don't understand how, how that works, then you're going to be at a deficit. There's some amazing things that you can do. So just so take something like, even if it's as simple as html, but I would, I would encourage it even kind of take a step up to maybe something like php, um, or maybe even a little Java script or Java script can be horribly confusing, um, to kind of an intro programmer, but, um, but learn to, to pick something out and learn to do some basic coding so you understand how, how one, how the software engineering process works and how the logic works and building. Because so much of our creative brief now have, have actual software functional specifications driven into the creative brief like I talked last week about.

Speaker 3:27:51And so it's important if you know how to define some functional requirements because you've done a little bit of coding and you know, how the software engineer has to kind of logically process through component by component to build it. It's going to help you be stronger. I'm in getting back what you want from your software engineers. So, um, and so, and there are so many opportunities to do this in an easy way. And just to kind of add it to your day. Um, so I would encourage you to go to Code Academy, go to Skillshare, Lynda. There's all kinds of these online video courses, um, and, and literally just drill through one of those sessions. Um, I really like Code Academy. I'm starting to send all of our marketers through codeacademy. They've got a great html slash javascript and CSS, a curriculum you go through like 10 weeks, they have you do projects, they have you delivered projects.

Speaker 3:28:43And so I think that's a super important. So go through one of those, um, and learn to do some basic coding so that you really get a sense of how, um, your software engineers think. And how that you can write a really good, solid functional specifications for them so that you can leverage that. I mean, there's, I probably sound like a broken record, but leverage your ability to build software into your experiences online. It will yield you incredible results because you're using that software to create a more fun and engaging experience for your consumers. A different kind of experience for your consumer. Um, and then ultimately, um, you can enhance their ability to execute whatever behaviors they're trying to do. So. So learn to code. Um, so with that, just to kind of a quick recap of some of the biggest mistakes that folks make when are new to an organization or new to marketing in general that you should avoid is don't start marketing without planning.

Speaker 3:29:48I'm planning and never actually getting to the marketing part or maybe spending all your time just reading about marketing and never doing or testing anything, uh, using tools before you actually do something and test something in a manual way. I'm never learning to work small. Um, and instead just throwing dollars and resources, that thing and hoping something sticks you, you definitely wanted to learn to work small first, avoiding the technical stuff. I'm avoiding, I'm just kind of putting this veil in front of your eyes and just assuming that somebody will take care of the technical stuff is a danger, danger. Um, and then not learning to code, I'm just taking a little bit of time, uh, to expand. Uh, you don't have to be awesome at it, but you should,

Speaker 2:30:32um, have some exposure and learn some basic coding. So I'm so keep learning, keep testing, work small and then scale winds. Um, and this ultimately is going to make you a better performance based digital marketer. All right, with that, we're going to cut to a quick segment break and we'll be back with our business

Speaker 1:30:49challenged. It's radical. You are listening to Kalydeco. Make the logo bigger podcast. You can find us on the web at [inaudible] dot com. K A l e I d I s c o.com. Now back to the show.

Speaker 2:31:04All right. So, um, I talked about it a little bit at the beginning and um, and so I'll kind of drill a little bit deeper in here. I'm getting ready to go on a sort of a lights out sabbatical, vacation for a couple of weeks and we're relatively small organization

Speaker 3:31:18only involved, uh, with all the clients and with everything that we're doing here is, it's kind of double hatting as the creative director as well as execution and management of the agency and so kinda pull out for two weeks, uh, and, and not be available for the most part because we're going overseas and that always creates a little bit of communication challenges, but that's probably not as hard as it used to be. But um, but anyway, so preparing for that, it has kind of been my biggest challenge for this week. So I'm spending a lot of time between sort of buttoning some projects up. I'm giving clear direction on projects that are coming down through the pipeline that would normally have my involvement. But because I'm gone, obviously different people are going to be involved. So making sure that we have good transition there. And we have good documentation as to kind of what's supposed to move forward and who's going to help move that forward.

Speaker 3:32:12Um, and then the last part, which has spent a lot of time, um, this last week I'm doing is those people that are newer to our organization and those people that are newer to digital marketing as well, trying to pour in as much knowledge as I can. So we did everything from, from, of teaching execution. I'm on certain things that we do. Um, did a lot of teaching on Google analytics, did a lot of teaching on, um, overall site reviews, which is a core part of what we do every single week to make sure that our client, uh, websites and marketing campaigns are executing well. So we spent some time there, um, to training on creative briefs, um, when we were talking about how to kind of formulate and build a new ideas and put those in front of clients. And uh, the last thing which was kind of fun, um, and never really done this, but I thought it was important in this time is really dry running.

Speaker 3:33:02Um, some client briefings and some, a client meetings and so we literally, I'm sort of rehearsed a few of the meetings that we know that are coming up in, in the, in the next couple of weeks, um, and talking about and roleplaying, um, the US, you know, as the agency I'm in role playing the client and kind of talking through the questions that a client will have, the things that we're going to present, the things that we think are important, um, the, the ideas that we're trying to convey in a clear way and then potential questions that the client would have, potential objections the client would have. So kind of doing that role playing process of just walking through a nice, well organized clean. I'm engaging client meeting. And so that was kind of a fun thing to do. But um, but it has been a little bit of a challenge.

Speaker 3:33:51Uh, it's always, whenever you kind of evaluate this is actually a good point of evaluation. Probably why you should always take two weeks of vacation is because in prepping for that, you have to really evaluate where your strengths are and weaknesses are in the organization and what's going to be strong when you pull out of it, um, and what's going to be weak. And so I'm definitely encouraged that one, you'll get a great vacation out of it, but two, it'll force you to, to constantly improve your organization by, by doing that evaluation that, that oftentimes you don't really take the time to do. All right? So hottest trends in marketing. Um, I don't know if this is a hot trend, but this is definitely something that's been a hot in front of mine for me and it's just simply going back to the basics as I go back through our clients.

Speaker 3:34:34Um, and, and kind of review everything that we're working on. Every single client seems to go through this cycle where we do some initial stuff. Um, and then we start to have some success and it will. Then we drift into the complex and oftentimes we kind of get stuck in the complex and we keep doing more and more complex things. Uh, and then the basics start to deteriorate, uh, because just as a simple example, a website, every time you build a website and then you start to add content to it, or you start to add features to it, it starts to deteriorate, uh, to some degree. And so you always have to go back to the basics, um, and sort of re a buttoned down, um, that, um, the, the fundamentals of that platform. Um, and so we're always in a process of doing that, but I'm really a big advocate even in our marketing programs, um, to go back and review the basics of a marketing program and make sure those things haven't deteriorated as we've gotten into more complex campaign.

Speaker 3:35:34So, so going back to the basics, I'm advocating simplicity. I'm giving the small things right? And building a platform that can really sustain some growth I think is super important. So as you, as you get a, some maturity with a client, um, some, some trust with a client, always make sure you're going back to the basics and making sure that those fundamentals are still performing well and not deteriorating, uh, based on some of the other, more complex things that you're doing because just inherently that will happen. All right, top recommendations of the week. Um, I'm always interested in how to kind of, um, I mean I'm a big advocate of learning and knowledge and like I said, I've been in this business for well over a couple of decades and I'm still constantly learning and, and, um, and hearing new ideas and, and seeing things that get me thinking about how to do things better.

Speaker 3:36:32Um, so I'm a big advocate of continual learning and one of the tools that has helped me do this, um, because oftentimes we're moving around, we're trying to do a life and we're, you know, doing things like working out and commuting and that kind of things. Um, there's definitely a good spot for this, uh, as a tool and that's audible. Um, and so it's pretty simple. It's relatively cheap, cost about as much as a book, uh, and you essentially get a book a month, um, but those, those, because of the time it takes you to kind of listen through incrementally, that's usually enough, right? And so that adds one more book a month, uh, to, to the, to the learning that I'm consuming. And so, um, I would definitely advocate I'm getting audible, um, and pain and making that investment in yourself and getting that one extra book and that one extra, um, sort of a mini college session, if you will, a into every month, uh, so that you're continuing to learn and be exposed to new ideas that you can bring and make you a more valuable asset, uh, either to your company or to your clients.

Speaker 3:37:36Um, so audible is a huge, huge thing. And again, most of us have a commute, a lot of us work out. Um, so there's always a good 20 to 30 minutes a built into your day where you're just, you know, Herman are staring into space. So fill it with audible. The other one I always like to give a book recommendation, the one that I'm kind of working on or working through right now is measure what matters by John Doerr and you heard me last week talk about, okay, ours objectives and key results, um, and how I've always been a fan of that. Um, and this is kind of a good book, uh, to, to work through and get some of the mechanics and here's some of the case studies that John Doerr who was Kinda the, the founder of this concept that he, uh, as a consultant, uh, to a lot of just incredible organizations work through and highlights, um, how, okay ours work in different organizations, um, and some of the effective and ineffective ways to deploy Okr.

Speaker 3:38:34So really encourage you to pick up that book and read it. It is a, um, this is one that I would probably do on audible. I'm, that's the way I, I'm, I'm kind of consuming this one is through audible. Um, I use my kindle all the time. The one that I recommended, um, uh, last week lost and found. I'm actually reading that one. And so we could talk about that at some point that I, I definitely, um, make an intentional decision on things that I read versus things that I listened to. This one I made an intentional decision to, to read because it's a little bit of a dense book. Um, and there's, uh, there are some points in the book that I feel like if I had read it, um, would, would start to drag and be dry and if I listen to just kind of plows through it, I listen to everything at one and a half speed.

Speaker 3:39:17It kind of plows through that and I don't feel like I'm getting bogged down. But sometime if I read a book like that, that I know is going to be dense, then I feel like I'll get weighed down and stuff that I probably don't really need to consume any way. But I won't. I'm not as likely to sort of scan through it like I should have. I've never really adapted that discipline very well of, of being able to put down a book. I start, um, or be able to scan through the boring parts. I've just, I don't know, there's something in me that, that makes it hard. I'm a kind of start to finish guy and so if I started something I'll, I'll kind of endure it and reading something that, that gets hard. Anyway, I just Kinda ranted there for a little bit, but just to give you some insight into kind of how I think about consuming books in particular.

Speaker 3:39:58Um, I make an intentional decision on, on some things that I think are going to be a little bit. I'm a little bit denser, a little bit harder to consume by reading and I just, I'll stick it into audible and listen through it and endure it that way. Um, so anyway, that's what type of African nations. Um, hopefully you enjoyed this. We always are looking for feedback. I'm like us give us a recommendation so that we can kind of get into more marketers hands by a given us five stars. I'm on any of the places that you watch us. And, and like I said, we love feedback so you can email me directly, billed outRice@politico.com. You can find me online, my numbers readily available if you want to call me or text me or whatever, but I would love to hear from you, um, and again, uh, what you like, what you don't about our podcast and I'm potentially things that you'd like to hear about in the future

Speaker 2:40:50because we're super, super enjoying a kind of doing this and hopefully you guys are getting the value and enjoyment out of kind of listening to, to how we work in and what we're working on. So with that, have a wonderful week and we're going to see you next Wednesday on episode 16.

Speaker 1:41:12Thanks for listening to collided lives. Make the logo bigger podcast. Leave your comments and reviews wherever you download your podcast. Find us on the web at [inaudible] dot com. K A l e I d I c o.com.